Macs & Usability
(Updated 3/27/05, See bottom)
Over the last few years I’ve had alot of friends switch over to Apple Fanboys. The lure of PowerBooks was too strong, and one by one they all left linux behind to join the Apple Masses. They then proceeded to tell tales of wonder and glee at how usable and beautiful the interface was, how it was simply a joy to use on a day-to-day basis, and how it was so great that every in the magic land of Apple “just worked”.
I wasn’t one of them. I’ve used Apple’s ever since the days of the Apple IIe, and while they were novel I just never found any reason to devote yourself to an uncustomizable hardware platform when PC’s were so easily “tweaked”. When the Macintosh’s first came on the scene, the new mantra become “Usability”. “Mac’s are so easy to use that PC’s will never compete” and blah blah blah. I used one a few times, but was never really impressed. Sure, everything was consistent and the same but it just didn’t seem “convenient” to me. OSX hit the scene a few years ago and the mantra reached an all-time-high as now not only was it “usable” but it was based on Linux (BSD to be exact) so it drew alot of *nix diehards.
This week our video editing guy was having trouble with his dual-proc G5 connecting it to our Windows File Server. Some security reins were tightened and he suddenly lost connectivity. I sat down to try and offer my help, since afterall I know samba pretty well and this was supposedly just *nix based right? I sat down to use it, my first time with OSX, and was flabbergasted at what some people consider “usable”. Read on for the list of problems I ran into.[tag:apple][tag:osx][tag:mac][tag:usability]
- I hit the “Connect to Server” box (Shortcut as Meta-K)
and typed in the usual “smb://jasper” line, and it didn’t work.
Thinking it might be a syntax thing, I figured I would check the Help
and see what options were available (I had hoped to specify a username,
password, workgroup, domain, something). Hitting the usual F1 (Which was even labeled “Help” on the keyboard, it’s a Final Cut Pro enhanced keyboard)
didn’t popup help, instead it “helped” me find my cursor by greying out
the entire screen except for a few inches around the cursor. - After
finally finding the help and digging through that for a bit, I decided
to try manually using smbclient from the command line. if it’s BSD
based, there’s a terminal right? But where are the programs at? With
some help from the video-guru, I found that you have to open the
“Applications Finder” and then find it under “Utilities”. - So
I finally get a terminal up and I’m typing away. The filesystem is a
bit different from a typical *nix build, but I’m managing. I reach up
to correct a keystroke with the “Delete key that is Actually a
Backspace” and accidentally hit the F13 button. Yes, I said the F13
button, yet another key that the Macinfolks have invented to further
distinguish themselves. What does that do, you ask? Grays the entire
screen, and shows the current date and time in HUGE font in the middle.
Yeah, that’s real useful. - So after a few tests I
find that I can use smbclient just fine, so I hit Ctrl-K and get this
funny character on the command line. Ok, so the terminal caught that.
I’ll just go to the menubar and open a new window, except the menu
option is gone? For some reason still unknown to me, Apple has decided
that you only really need to see 1 menu at a time, so they all replace
each other at the top of the screen. To get back to the default menubar
I have to unfocus the terminal, which completely reconfigures the menu,
and then I get it. This proceeded to burn me several times as I used
the machine and switched between Safari, Terminals, and the desktop. - One
thing that really bugs me is the “Meta” key. On every other keyboard in
existence it’s simply the “Alt” key, but Mac is too good for that. They
instead have the “square curly thing key”.
From using a new system I expected a few things to be different, that
just comes with the territory. But for “usable”, I’ld have to say the
Mac is anything but. I’m sure alot of you will flame & disagree
with me, but one major component of usability is “Does the system do
what the user expects?”
Given that, as much as I hate to say it, Windows is the market leader
in desktop OS’s, why doesn’t the Mac behave a little more
“Windows-like” ? Linux has seen & accepted that with KDE & Gnome,
but for some reason Apple rejects it entirely. If you’re not the first
big player on the scene, then you’re somewhat forced to follow their
lead in “usability”, unless you can bring something else big to the
table. Apple should already know this given how many people are copying
their wildly successful iPod interface.
So,
I’ve (once again) decided that the Mac just isn’t for me. I’m sure
you’re not surprised to hear it. For some reason, I feel the need to
link to Crash Different.
Update: 3/27/06
I talked to my buddy Doug about some of the stuff I ran into, and found a few things out.
- The F13 thing was the Dashboard,
a kind of “alternate desktop” that uses Javascript and CSS. Evidently
you can install (or write) widgets and drop them in there to make it do
all kinds of neat stuff. Evidently, none were installed on this system
except the default clock. - The F1 thing isn’t “normal”. Not sure what exactly it was doing, maybe something custom to that keyboard?
- The
Backspace vs Delete debate. On Apple’s the “Delete” key is in the same
location as a normal keyboards “Backspace” key, but behaves (in my
experience) as a Delete. In terminal windows this can be changed, but
still don’t know if it can be changed in OSX Windows (like Safari &
FInder)
The biggest complaint for me still is the menubar.
Doug confirmed that the one-menubar is just “The Apple Way” and can’t
be changed. In a sense, it works great from a UI perspective since a
menubar bound to the top of the screen has effectively “infinite”
height. This fits the principles of Fit’s Law
that say easy targets should be both close & large. Unfortunately,
when you’re using dual 30″ cinema displays the distance between windows
on the right monitor the menu on the left monitor becomes a huge
frustration. Personally I find it easier from a cognitive sense to have
everything tightly grouped, so I want the menus with their apps, but I
can see the easy behind the Apple way. Perhaps if the menu could be
duplicated onto the other head? Or be constrained to be vertically
above the window?
And for those of you who care, we did finally
get the Mac to talk to the Windows fileserver. For some reason, they
had to enable “TCP/IP over NetBEUI” (or NetBIOS,
not sure which and they wouldn’t tell me) in order to get it to work. I
don’t know why the terminal smbclient would work, but I suspect they
just have a slightly different version of the samba tools integrated
into the UI than what’s available from the command line, which I’ve
also seen in a Gnome desktop I have nearby.
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